Ten Startups Selected by Village Capital and Zuora for Sustainability Subscribed

Washington, D.C., (August 2, 2022) – Village Capital, with support and grant funding from leading cloud-based subscription management platform provider Zuora®, announced that 10 startups were selected to take part in Sustainability Subscribed, an accelerator program for startups creating solutions to fight climate change and preserve the world through subscription models.

The open call had a focus on startups employing recurring revenue models, such as subscriptions and moving the needle towards greater sustainability and net zero emissions.

More than 50 entrepreneurs from 16 states applied to be a part of the accelerator. The final cohort is composed of the top 10 companies, 40% of the cohort is headquartered outside of US tech hubs (NY, CA, MA), 40% have a BIPOC member of the founding team or C-Suite and 70% have a female member of the founding team or C-Suite. These companies are creating solutions around greenhouse gas emissions, access to clean energy, resilience, and sustainability of food and water systems, circular economy and sustainability, and climate change.

Here are the 10 startups working to employ subscription or recurring revenue models to fight climate change in the US:

• Akeptus (Mars, PA) is making smart technology more accessible by making a low-cost solution that helps homeowners of all income levels cut their energy use.
• Ampliphi (Atlanta, GA) is a data-driven sustainability-as-a-service platform that helps brands and retailers amplify a circular economy.
• Benchmark Labs (San Diego, CA) offers asset-specific environmental forecasts to high-value asset managers to increase opportunity costs and operating margins.
• FloVision Solutions (South Bend, IN) reduces food waste in cafeterias, fast food, and quick service restaurants through computer vision and machine learning. 
• Haystack Ag (Boston, MA) provides cost-effective and high-accuracy soil carbon verification solutions for landowners and carbon markets.
• IncentiFind (Houston, TX) is the nation’s go-to database of green building incentives,  they are transforming US real estate to become sustainable through $70 billion in incentives. 
• Saascharge (New York, NY) enables anyone to enter the electric vehicle charging market thanks to an open, scalable, and interconnected platform.
• Scope Zero (San Francisco, CA) is building a platform to facilitate a new employee benefit called a carbon savings account, which reduces employees' CO2 footprints and boosts corporate sustainability goals.
• Sortile (New York, NY) provides AI-driven solutions that make textile waste valuable by enabling fiber-to-fiber recycling.
• Voltpost (New York, NY) is retrofitting lamp posts into smart electric vehicle charging stations to decarbonize mobility and democratize charging access.

From August to November 2022, selected startups will participate in three online workshops and one in-person workshop on improving investment-readiness. Each company will have the opportunity to work closely with industry experts, investors, and ecosystem partners to develop the networks they need to scale their impact. The top two peer-selected companies will receive USD $50,000 each in grant funding.

All startups in the program will be invited to join Abaca, Village Capital’s global online network that helps entrepreneurs analyze and structure their businesses for investment. The network also matches them with the right investors and resources.

For more information, reach out to Sofía Cándano at Village Capital (sofia.candano@vilcap.com)

About Village Capital

Village Capital helps entrepreneurs bring big ideas from vision to scale. Our mission is to reinvent the system to back the entrepreneurs of the future. Our vision is a future where business creates equity and long-term prosperity. Since 2009, we have supported more than 1,000 early-stage entrepreneurs through our investment readiness programs. Our affiliated fund, VilCap Investments, has invested in more than 110 program graduates.

About Zuora, Inc.

Zuora provides the leading cloud-based subscription management platform that functions as a system of record for subscription businesses across all industries. Powering the Subscription Economy®, the Zuora platform was architected specifically for dynamic, recurring subscription business models, and acts as an intelligent subscription management hub that automates and orchestrates the entire quote to cash and revenue recognition process. Zuora serves more than 1,000 companies around the world, including Box, Ford, Penske Media Corporation, Schneider Electric, Siemens, Xplornet, and Zoom. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Zuora also operates offices around the world in the U.S., EMEA and APAC. To learn more about the Zuora platform, please visit www.zuora.com.

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